Media and Information Literacy: Day 4

The Evolution of Media

        For the fourth day of our second semester, we discussed about the evolution of media. According to our teacher, its evolution consisted of four different ages. These were the pre-industrial, industrial, electronic and information age.These periods consisted of how people used media in order to store and broadcast information and to communicate with other people. Our further discussion led us to a task where we had to fill up the table with what we think people used in the following ages. My table can be seen below:

Humanity continued to progress in order to make the broadcasting, storing and sharing of information a whole lot easier than it was before. To summarize our lesson, I listed down the definitions of each age:

• Pre-Industrial Age is when people discovered fire, developed paper from plants, and forged weapons and tools with stone, bronze, copper and iron.
• Industrial Age is when people used the power of steam, developed machine tools, established iron production, and the manufacturing of various products.
• Electronic Age is when people harnessed the power of transistors that led to the transistor radio, electronic circuits, and the early computers.
• Information Age is the age that we all live in currently. It is also the age when the internet paved the way for faster communication and the creation of the social network.

Our teacher ended our discussion by giving us an assignment to do at home:

Given the available media that we now have in the world, what are its roles and functions in a democratic society?

Media’s roles and functions depend on a person who uses it. In my opinion, one of media’s main roles in a democratic society is to always give out only truthful information to the people. As I said on our first assignment on being literate in media and information, misleading or wrong information is a very dangerous and troublesome if people believed it.

On the other hand, another role of media is for the easy interaction of people all around the world. People don’t have to travel far in order to communicate with a person from another city or another country. They can reach them by just simply messaging them on social media.

"In what way does media affect your life (personal, professional, academic, social, others)?"           Personally, media affects my life greatly. Part of my everyday life is interacting with people in the online community, reading comics/manga and even watching videos. Media also provides a way for me to share my life with other people on the Internet by just simply posting it. Media in the areas of my academic play also a big part in my life. If I had a certain subject that I didn’t understand or if I wanted to learn more about a particular topic, I use media since it provides lots of information.  In summary, media will continue to progress as time passes. As media continues to expand, we should become more responsible in handling it.